Tag: pay & reward

It’s not long until businesses with 150 or more staff need to start reporting their Gender Pay Gap figures.  Jane Baalam offers some background here and some suggestions on how you can prepare if this applies to your organisation.

It’s been an interesting couple of years for Gender Pay Gap reporting.  I don’t think I have had many clients who haven’t seen an impact one way or the other caused by government initiatives to support us through Covid.   Stats have got better where high numbers of part-time and low-paid women have come out of the workforce, and stats have got worse where high numbers of men have been furloughed on full pay, vs women on part-time pay.  It all depends on each organisation and what it has been through.

But it seems that just when I have given up on the government doing anything positive to further engage with the issue, there is a quiet reminder that the reporting is due to be expanded to cover more employers.  If you at or nearing 150 staff you’ll need to get ready to report your Gender Pay Gap for the first time.  Organisations with 150 or more staff will have to start reporting from 2024, with businesses of 50 or more staff reporting from 2025.   That’s headcount of course and not FTE.

Thinking about getting your ducks in a row?

Just a thought, but if you have been dreading this moment, and you want to get your ducks in a row before the reporting affects your organisation, now is the time to do it.  Here’s my tips:

• Pull your numbers for the March/April pay run and iron out the issues with that exercise (including identifying who qualifies as relevant employees or not).
• Then do a test calculation and produce your stats for your median pay gap, mean pay gap, median bonus gap, mean bonus gap and ratio of men and women in each quartile.
• Then review your data and design your commentary – what are the causes of your gaps, what are you doing to address them?
• Learn what your issues are; both with the process and with the resulting stats.
• And while you have time still before you actually report, take the next step and do an equal pay audit.  Then, when you have to produce your numbers for real, you will already be practiced in the process and have set in place any steps for corrective action.

Find the time – it will pay off

I know everyone is busy.  Show me an HR and Finance team that had time to put their feet up over the past couple of years.  When other people were furloughed, these teams were working flat out to implement pandemic processes.  Now everyone is back, they’re working flat out again to smooth the way to whatever working practices are being put in place.

Reporting is, in my view, one of the things we have to find time for.  Get it right and no one will notice but get it wrong and it will generate all the wrong attention.

We have masses of experience advising and supporting businesses through all sorts of Pay & Reward issues including Gender Pay Gap reporting and Equal Pay Audits.  We offer a range of services and price points for our clients.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help your business, please get in touch for an initial discussion of your requirements.